Randall Munroe Profile picture
Oct 31, 2023 1 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Breaker Box xkcd.com/2848
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More from @xkcd

Dec 15, 2022
(Thread) In the first What If? book, I answered a question about cooking a steak by dropping it from space. At one point, I commented—jokingly!—that if anyone put a steak in a hypersonic wind tunnel to gather better data, I’d love to see the video.

Well, I have good news.
After What If? came out, I was contacted by Tom Fisher and Thomas Rees, University of Manchester researchers studying hypersonic heat transfer. They had finished their wind tunnel experiments early, so they decided to head to the corner store, buy a steak, and gather some data.
Video 1: A Sainsbury’s 21 day matured beef steak in Mach 5 winds, recorded using Schlieren imaging to show the hypersonic shockwave
Read 7 tweets
Jul 27, 2022
THREAD: The evolution of Pokémon cards through history, as generated by DALL·E 2

For starters, here’s what DALL·E 2 thinks 21st century Pokémon cards look like, using prompts like “A Pokémon card from 2001”
By changing the year in the prompt, we can ask for older Pokémon cards. These ones are from various years in the 1980s. #dalle2
Let’s keep going backward in time. Here are Pokémon cards of the 1970s #dalle2
Read 36 tweets
Jun 2, 2022
The DALL·E image generator can produce spectacular visuals, but really stumbles over text. As a result, the tourism posters it comes up with are extremely good. Visit scenic Colado! #dalle
There’s so much to see in Canda 🇨🇦 #dalle
From Canda you can head over the border to the Untes Sates 🇺🇸 #dalle
Read 10 tweets
May 10, 2022
What If 2 comes out in 2^(e^(π/ϕ)) days! If you preorder a copy you’ll get it then: amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS…
57π kilominutes until What If 2 comes out
If you preorder What If 2 now (xkcd.com/whatif2), and then start watching Jeopardy! 24 hours a day, beginning with Alex Trebek’s first episode in 1984 and skipping commercials and credits, you will catch up to the current episode right when the book arrives
Read 4 tweets
May 5, 2022
SEMANTLE NIGHTMARE ROUND

I went through the dataset behind the infuriating word game Semantle (semantle.com) to try to calculate what the hardest-to-guess words would be. If regular Semantle isn’t annoying enough for you, try solving these 10 nightmare words (thread):
These aren’t obscure or specialized words; just reasonably common words without many close synonyms. We’ll start with a pretty easy one—difficulty is subjective, but I think this one isn’t too bad.

1. semantle.com/?word=dGltaW5n…
I think #2 is also not too bad. They get harder after this.

2. semantle.com/?word=cGFydDQ1…
Read 11 tweets
Apr 12, 2022
Using GPT-3 to gain new insight into historical figures ImageImage
GPT-3 is also useful for learning about contemporary political figures Image
Emily, no Image
Read 5 tweets

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